Sunday, September 29, 2013

Once Upon A Time 3.01 Review: Sometimes You Just Need to Believe

All those that have yet to watch
the season three premiere of Once Upon A
Time, entitled ‘The Heart of the Truest Believer’, that wish to do so
devoid of spoilers, then now would be the time to exit the premises. As always,
there is a chance that this blog contains spoilers regarding the episode, as
well as previous episodes. THIS REVIEW
MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS! You’ve been warned.

So we finally managed to get to
Neverland. Can’t say I’m all that excited about it, Peter Pan was never one of
my favourite fairy tales. I do have to say though that the young man that plays
him in this series provided the best performance of the episode. How is it that
a young actor such as himself can do better with the terrible writing this
series emits, than actors almost twice his age? Maybe it has something to do
with the ability to believe that you are the character in this world, and to be
as imaginative as possible. Though that wouldn’t explain just how terrible
Henry is played most of the time.

Aside from Pan, the highlights of
this episode were any time Emma, Hook, or Neal popped up on screen, but I’m
biased when it comes to them because they’re my three favourite characters. I
have to say I’m just glad they each had a fair amount of screen time, because
that’s not always the case of this series.

One of my problems with this
series is that I think that a show that started off as being lead by this one
character, should keep her in the loop for most episodes, and not be distracted
by all these extra characters that get focused on far too often. This show is
very much reminiscent of the structure Lost
had by focusing on one character for an episode, and then different ones
onward. And I get that the creators of this series were apart of that one, but
it becomes tiresome when I’m being sold one thing, and I only get that one
thing every so often.

When it comes to CGI efforts, this
series is never very good, I can almost always tell when something is fake, and
it rather bothers me because it takes me out of the moment. You’d think a
series that knew it was going to heavily involve fairy tale characters would
know that fantastical scenarios would be involved in that, and would either
find good CGI people, or use real things to create it. I can only wonder how
difficult it is for the actors.

That leads me to another issue I
have with this series, the acting. I do have to give some thought to whether
it’s the writing that makes it so bad in this series, but I find a lot of the
time that it’s either over-acting, or just horrible people cast as these
characters. These people are bringing an imaginative world to life, and it
takes a fair amount of vision to actually make that believable to the audience,
and I just don’t think that’s coming across sometimes. Sure there are a few
gems that seem to be able to act their part, but most of them don’t seem to be
able. And these are actors that are very convincing in other roles they’ve
played, but I’m just not seeing it here.

That brings me around to the
writing. Can this series not get some better writers? Strictly from this
episode alone we have these terrible lines for that one Lost Boy, and then the
ridiculousness of crying over a poppet. There’s the terrible back and forth
between the Evil Queen and Snow White, and then between Prince Charming and
Hook. And don’t even get me started on Mulan, Aurora, and Robin Hood. Plus
could that toast to Baelfire/Neal have been any more pathetic? I was writing
better scripts when I was twelve, and I had a pretty big imagination back then.

Was anyone else beyond happy when
Tamara and Greg were killed? I know I screamed ‘Thank God’ when it happened.
And boy am I glad Rumplestiltskin did not permanently save Tamara, because that
would’ve been like dangling the fruit in front of me, and then ripping it away.
Not only were these characters terrible, in both writing and acting, but also
they served almost no real purpose. The whole Home Office thing that was just a
ruse to get Henry to Neverland was beyond ridiculous. Did the writers just pull
that out of their ass? Because honestly, that’s how it felt to me. ‘We’re going
to go this way, no wait we’re going to go this way.’ Make up your mind, and
stick to it, if you want to go one way, make damned sure there’s the ability to
go that way and nothing blocking your path, continuity wise.

In general, this episode was all
right, nothing fabulous about it, and nothing last season’s finale didn’t
falsely get me excited over. For future episodes, I’d really like more work on
the writing, acting, and definitely much more Emma. Oh, and please stop making
the Charming’s ridiculously naïve, when Snow was such a bad ass in the
Fairytale Land that Was.

My rating: 3 out of 5.

Best Lines:

“I will not be capsized by a fish!” – Charming shouts over
the mermaid calling the storm, in a brief line performance that actually struck
well with me.

“Actually, I quite fancy you from time to time, when you’re
not yelling at me.” – Hook referring to Emma, and did anyone see the brief look
that passed over her face when he said this?

Okay buckaroos, that’s all for now, I’m off to go watch Revenge, and then get some more Buffy in before I have to get to sleep
so I can actually be aware for work tomorrow, stay tuned for one more review.